The effect of the engines going full speed had a tendency to pull her down aft fully a foot. The model on the table there was made from my instructions. It has the dimensions of the _Alert_, and it is only made from recollections of the vessel. I had no plans to guide me. It is, I believe, a very fair representation of the _Alert_. She had very fine lines both fore and aft, and thus her stability was reduced very considerably. I have calculated the weight of machinery, including shaft and propeller, as about 150 tons. That also includes the coal bunkers. With that weight in such a small vessel, it had the effect of putting her so far down in the water that she showed very little freeboard. It was too heavy for the vessel. She was not able to carry such a weight in that particular part of the ship, and it brought her down too much aft. Putting whatever cargo you like in her foreward, in my opinion she would not be fit for ocean going under any circumstances. By the time you got the vessel sufficiently loaded foreward, she would be so deeply immersed that she would show very little freeboard from the midship section aft. Assuming she had nine feet six inches of water-line aft, and four feet six inches foreward, then she had about one foot nine inches freeboard aft, and eight feet of freeboard foreward. I heard it stated in evidence that there were forty-four tons of cargo on board on her last trip. With that amount of cargo, and placed in the position it was, from the nature of the cargo—it being of so light a description—it would take so much space in the hold that it would add to her instability. It would be stowed up to the deck, and would not lie far enough foreward in the vessel. In my opinion with all that weight aft, she was not fit for sea going at that time of the year. Southerly gales are more frequent and more heavy about Bass Straits in summer than in winter. From the extraordinary dimensions of the ship in the first place, and from her being so deeply immersed in the water aft, she was not sea-worthy. For the length to be eighteen times that of her depth is, I think, out of all proportion. There is not any hard and fast rule as to what a vessel’s dimensions should be, but in my opinion, according to Lloyd’s rule, the length should never exceed sixteen times the depth. I remember the grating. It was not safe to go to sea without some protection for it. It would have been only a necessary precaution to have had cleats and tarpaulins ready. I think that the whole of the casing round the engine room was unsafe. It left only the alleyways on each side to hold water. The two sides would hold somewhere about fifty tons, and that quantity would be sufficient to put the ship out of sight. The sides of the vessel ought to have been carried up as high as the top of the casing, and the whole thing covered over with a deck. The entrances to the engine room and stoke-hole were dangerous. When the alleyways are full of water, it is bound